Indonesia: Millennia-old Civilization and Multireligious Secular State

Five Pancasila symbols on Indonesian stamps, 1965 (Wikimedia Commons).

Two millennia of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic layering gave Indonesia a multireligious democracy that has held.

Indonesia adopted “Pancasila” as its state ideology soon after its independence in August 1945.  It did this though it was a Muslim-majority state and despite the strong opposition of some Muslim organizations. 

The five principles of Indonesia’s “Pancasila” are: (a) belief in one Supreme God, (b) just and civilised humanity, (c) unity of Indonesia, (d) democracy guided by wisdom and deliberation, and (e) Social Justice for all Indonesians. 

How Indonesia’s multireligious civilizational mosaic was created over two millennia is briefly narrated hereunder.

After India’s Emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism in 260 CE, he sent its monks to many countries to spread the noble tenets of nonviolence and compassion. Two monks named Sona and Uttara who were sent to Burma set up Southeast Asia’s first Theravada Buddhist monastery at Kelasa near Thaton. From here Buddhism spread eastwards to Thailand and southwards to Malaya and Indonesia over the next eight centuries.

In 650 CE, the Sri Vijaya Buddhist Kingdom was founded in southern Sumatra. Its capital and principal port was Palembang. By 1000 CE, this kingdom ruled most of Sumatra and eastern Java, controlled both sides of the Malacca Straits, and dominated Indian Ocean trade with China. Resenting this, Chola Emperor Rajendra I attacked Palembang in 1025, dethroned the Sri Vijaya monarch, and looted his treasures.

This increased the salience of central Java’s Sailendra Buddhist kingdom, which introduced Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism to Java, and built Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist monument. It is the tomb of a Sailendra ruler in Mahayana Buddhist architectural style.

Hinduism came to Indonesia via Borneo from the Southeast Asia region long known as Funan (covering parts of present-day Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam) to which it had been taken by a South Indian brahmin named Koundinya in the first century CE. It arrived in Bali in the sixth century CE and spread eastwards to Java. Four centuries later, it “met” Buddhism in central Java. Borobudur (built 800 CE) and the Prambanan Shiva Temple (built 1000 CE) are just fifty miles apart!

The first traces of Islam are found in a 1082 CE tombstone at Aceh in northern Sumatra. Two small Muslim kingdoms later emerged in Sumatra’s port cities of Pasai and Perlak. As gold was discovered and pepper began to be cultivated in the region, these kingdoms prospered. Malacca’s ruler, though of Palembang royal descent, embraced Islam as most of his subjects had already done so, and this facilitated political and commercial relations with Muslim countries. As the Islam brought to Indonesia by Indian traders was of the Sufi rather than Wahhabi type, Indonesians deeply honed by 10 centuries of close contact with the introspective and tolerant natures of Buddhism and Hinduism readily accepted it.

Hinduism and Buddhism reached their apogee in the Majapahit Empire, which some scholars have described as a Hindu-Buddhist thalassocracy, meaning maritime power. Founded as a kingdom by Raden Wijaya in 1292 after countering the Mongol invasion of Java, it became an empire during the reign of King Hayam Wuruk in the mid-14th century. According to the Nagarakṛtāgama  (a poetic eulogy of the Majapahit Empire written by Mpu Prapanca in 1365) this empire had 98 tributaries in what would be called the Indonesian archipelago, Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand, and the Sulu archipelago (southern Philippines).

A prolonged civil war in the late 15th century greatly weakened the empire. This enabled the  Sultanate of Demak to invade and subjugate it in 1527. In the next three centuries, Indonesia became predominantly Muslim. However Bali, to which the Majapahit nobility retreated after their empire collapsed, is still predominantly Hindu.

The deep impact of Buddhism and Hinduism is still seen in many spheres in Indonesia.

Prof. P.J. Zoetmulder,  who in 1982 compiled the Old Javanese-English dictionary,  has averred that almost 14,000 words in it are Sanskrit-derived and, unlike words derived  from Arabic and Persian, “are no longer perceived to be foreign.”

The far deeper impact however is of India’s Ramayana and Mahabharata epics. Dance scholars have identified over 200 versions of the former in Indonesia’s dance and puppetry repertoire.

The great impact of the Mahabharata

I was amazed to discover when, as India’s ambassador to Egypt, I called on the Grand Sheik, king of Cairo’s renowned Al Azhar University. Placed on a high table in his office was a large, glass-enclosed silver sculpture of Lord Krishna and Arjuna in a chariot.  When I told him how glad I was to see this fine sculpture of the prime episode in India’s Mahabharata epic in his office, he blandly responded that it was presented to him by the president of Indonesia.

By adopting “Pancasila” as its state ideology and strenuously striving to safeguard it, Indonesia has preserved the enlightened tenets India gifted it many centuries ago. Sadly, in India in recent years its millennia-old ideals of “Ekam Sat’ and ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ have been replaced with a pernicious Hindutva ideology.  “Ram Bhakts” (Ram devotees) and “Gow Rakshaks” (cow protectors) now frequently attack members of minority communities, their places of work and worship, and their educational and charitable institutions. 

The Election Commission’s SIR has disenfranchised thousands of Muslim and Christian voters in recent months. India’s global image as the world largest democracy and multireligious state, which previously had shone brightly because of Gandhi’s nonviolent freedom struggle in which patriotic Indians of all faiths took part, and because of India’s adoption of a secular constitution despite being partitioned on religious lines, is now greatly tarnished.

India’s present rulers should therefore make an in-depth  study of Indonesia’s enlightened post-independence governance, particularly its policies of funding educational institutions of all its six religious communities (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Protestant, Catholic and Confucian), promoting equal respect for all religions, and ensuring that communal bigots do not undermine its millennia-old multireligious social mosaic or its  renown as a model secular state in the modern era.